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74 • Green Project Management

hoW are ProjeCts Chosen?
Now that we’ve briefly discussed the “why,” we need to look at the “how.”
Not all identified projects within any organization can be chosen. “All
projects should support the organization’s strategic goals. The strate-
gic plan of the performing organization should be considered as a fac-
tor when making project selection decisions and prioritization.” If the
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company has (as many now do) strategic goals that are tied to climate
change and social responsibility, this is a key linkage of which the proj-
ect manager and team must be aware. Economics, resource availability,
timeliness, or ability to execute may influence whether or not a project is
accepted. The process of picking a project in some organizations, in spite
of all of the great ideas and reasoning, can be complex, vague, inequitable,
and downright mysterious. To put it in perspective, however, a project
should be chosen for very specific reasons, such as: it satisfies a business
or human need, it fits with the strategic plan of the organization, and it
has been determined doable (financially, technically). However, there is
one more criterion that should be considered: that is, the environmental
responsibility of the project, or its ability to satisfy a greenality compo-
nent, because “a project run with green intent is the right thing to do.”
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As asserted previously and supported by the PMBOK Guide, the project
should link with the strategic plan of the organization. Any project man-
ager should be able to point “up” to reference their team as to how their
particular project contributes to the enterprise vision. Without that, not
only will the team be undermotivated, but even if they are motivated,
they are producing a deliverable that doesn’t make a contribution to the
organization’s raison d’être. We assert that greenality must be part of
the decision-making process. It is part of the SMARTER (see Figure 5.2)
objectives and the stakeholder analysis. It was previously mentioned that
stakeholders are becoming increasingly aware of green components in
every project undertaken. If consideration of green components is not in
the criteria for decision making, then that decision alone could lead to
project failure—the inability of the project to meet or exceed customer
expectations. Here we include those expectations as outlined in “Surfing
the Green Wave” (Section I). Customers increasingly expect your project,
and the product of the project, to be green. Decision making is a mental
process in which individual project fundamentals are discussed in the
context of the project’s purpose, and then a selection or selections is/are